Game 2 preview: No lineup changes for either team, lessons from series opener and the Braun-Stuart matchup

SAN JOSE – No changes in the Sharks lineup. No changes for the Los Angeles Kings either.

That was the closest thing to news this morning as both teams prepared for Sunday night’s Game 2 in the first-round playoff series that saw the Sharks skate away with a 6-3 victory in the opener.

Both coaches, of course, found things they didn’t like in the first game. For Todd McLellan, it was a third period that saw the Kings turn a 5-0 blowout into a tight 5-3 contest with 6:01 left to play. But McLellan hopes to use that for a teachable moment going forward.

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Some of that’s covered in the online forward filed earlier and available here . But we’ll elaborate here on that and other elements.

“If you play on your heels, you stand back, you give them time and space and the ability to generate speed and get their forecheck going, you have no chance of winning,” McLellan said. “We can use Game 1 as a real good teaching tool.

“We have this presentation and this presentation,” he continued, looking from one hand to the other. “Which team do you want to be? If we make this decision over here we give ourselves a chance to win. If we make this one it’s not going to happen for us, and it’s as simple as that. It’s a very black and white comparison if you will.

“The players had that on our very first day, the day off on Saturday or Friday,” he continued. “That was the only message sent to them. But now it’s a matter of getting out there and doing it.”

Sutter to chose to focus on the final minute of the first period in looking at what contributed to the outcome.

“Really we made a bad change in the last minute, and two of our guys turned pucks over within about five feet for two goals. So it was really the difference in the game,” he said. “We’re not going to, quite honest, beat San Jose trying to score four goals. That’s for sure.”

****Sutter said his top players have to be better in Game 2 and that probably includes the line of Mike Richards, Jeff Carter and Dwight King. One of the reasons the Sharks felt they had success against the Kings was a matchup that had Justin Braun and Brad Stuart on the ice with them.

“They’re a good line, big bodies,” Stuart said. “You’ve just got to play them physical and expect that they’re going to play physical. You’ve got to take away their time and the scoring opportunities they’re going to get. They’re going to get some chances, but you’ve got to limit those.”

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Braun said he thought that the Sharks were able to keep the Carter-Richards-King line from roaming around the offensive zone.

“I thought we broke out pretty quickly and made them dump it a lot,” Braun said.

Carter did get a very good early scoring opportunity, but Antti Niemi came up with a big save just 18 seconds into the game.

“Brad broke his stick,” Braun explained. “I didn’t see he was going over to the bench, and it just kind of ended up that way. Thankfully Nemo bailed us out, and got going after that. Little bit of nerves at the start and reading things, but after that I think we settled in and did a pretty good job.”

****Prevailing wisdom says not to expect the kind of offensive explosion that Game 1 turned out to be.

“Yeah we figure it’s going to be 2-1 type scores,” said Sharks captain Joe Thornton. “I doubt we’ll score five on them again tonight. Just be prepared for a tight-checking game.’’

And you can expect the usual playoff series adjustments.

“Yeah, they don’t want to go down two games to nothing so they’ll be ready,” Thornton said. “But we’ll be ready, too. They’ll play a little bit different but we’ll play different, too.’’

The Sharks will be going for another high-energy start, however.

“Everyone knows we come out hard the first 10 minutes, that’s no secret,” Thornton said. “But we had a few bounces go our way and it kind of sunk them.’’

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.

I think he said he has to stream the game. So, probably can’t record it.

Oregon Rachel

Haha, you guys are too funny! No wonder I love you both…

Oregon Rachel

No, just Parsley and Sage.

Phat Stat Phil

Careful with them around Stevo. I think he wants to make Thyme with one of ’em. ; )

GP_hockeyhappens

“Then the murderer’s row of Brown, Torres and Justin Braun happened in the second period,…”

He didn’t mention candidate. Those 3 were the guys that scored the goals that sunk the Kings in the 2nd. Braun’s being the GWG.

Stevo

Good night, you princes (and princess) of hockey, you kings (and Queen) of WTC.

TheMask

Niemi sucked tonight. He was really lucky we blew them out. Time after time I saw that his skate was outside the post, which is impossibly bad positioning for a pro goalie. He also was lunging quite a bit–another bad tendency. If you’re at all objective, you look at performance not outcome. Niemi was as bad as I’ve ever seen him.

Hawk Valentine

The first two were answers to their two. Or did they score one unanswered and then we scored to answer secnd then we scored six unanswered, technically. You are uber technical and shoukd know this.

TheMask

Torres was the star tonight. It may have been obscured by the later onslaught, but he turned it around. Not since Gladiator has there been such a combination of brutality and finesse. Torres, in my mind, is the leader of this team right now. Two times he started the momentum from his own end and participated in finishing it off in the offensive end when the game was on a knife edge. His passing is nearly on the level of Thornton–he sees the ice as well as anyone, and everything he does advances the play to his team’s advantage. Is this over the top? I don’t think so. Watch the rest of the playoffs. Torres is an elite player.

Buddy Elf

Are you kidding?

Sharks scored 7 in a row without the Kings scoring. That is 7 unanswered.

sharks1989

not over the top one bit, Sharks have been really good for him so far despite the injury and vice verse. Lets just hope he stays healthy..

sharks1989

🙂 At least it’s still when the kids and wife are sleeping and no one to bother me lol, until I woke my 9 month old up on I think the Sharks 3rd goal. It’s all good though he just wanted to watch the game with me. Has to learn eh?

sharks1989

4 am 🙂 and yep I have to stream it. Hoping the Sharks keep pushing since i’m going to the States in 2 weeks for the first time in over 5 years!! Maybe can catch a game at the tank!

sharks1989

I mainly just end up typing something stupid about Niemi or Demers in a tired angry rant then regret it a few hours later lol. Sometimes I read my post later in the day and don’t remember writing it.

Tom (fm Quinzee)

Phil, it’s irony. The “murderers row” moniker goes back to at least the 1927 Yankees. Ruth, Gehrig, Lazerri and I don’t remember who-all. They were a brutal run of hitters that a pitcher had to get through. One doesn’t think of Brown, Torres and Braun as players that inspire fear THROUGH THEIR SCORING ABILITY. I went all caps there, irony again, because they do inspire fear stemming from their physicality.

And before anyone takes the obvious cheap shot, no, I DID NOT SEE THEM PLAY. My father did, though.

Was this an imaginary friend? 🙂
Did he hang around for the answer?
Did he sneak off with your girlfriend when you scurried away to your computer lair?

Stevo

Torres is not an elite player. He should have been a top-6 in the past. Always been a skilled skater and scorer. But, for some reason, he decided to be a scumbag most of his career.

Only Ray Charles confused him with the likes of Ovechkin/Kessel/Crosby/Marleau/Jumbo.

It’s certainly good news that he seems to have brought his NHL mentality into the 21st century with perfect timing for SJ this season.

Dirty

Somethimg something cumin. I’ll just sagely leave it at that.

Dirty

Guess how many assists Thornton has? 0. Weird.

GP_hockeyhappens

You’d think statistically, out of 13 goals in two games, Jumbo would have at least 3 or 4 assists. 🙂

That is weird.

Tom (fm Quinzee)

Stevo, you can tell yourself that, and enjoy the conversation, but I think the reason the Sharks are working so hard to crush the Kings is that this team wants to win. Revenge is meaningless if you’re a player watching at home.

Tom (fm Quinzee)

That’s cold.

While I have your undivided attention, and since I have no belief in jinxes, if the Sharks break through and win the Cup, are you going to change your handle? Might I suggest “FAC” as in “Finally a Cup.”

And btw, I was at that 10-0 shellacking of the Leafs. No, it did not get boring.

Tom (fm Quinzee)

That would be “sagely leaf it at that”??? I’m just trying to curry favor…

GP_hockeyhappens

I keep getting peppered with puns, I am only sea-ing salt in the wounds! Maybe smoking some dill weed will ease the discomfort?

LTNC

Were you at the one when Sittler scored, like, seven?
I’ll spend the next six months trying to come up with something clever and enigmatic. Maybe hold a contest for the best repurposing of “LTNC.”

LTNC

But wait, their ice time was an almost perfectly balanced 3.5-3.5-3.5. There was no increase in ice time for those guys in the 3rd.
Brown never set foot on the ice in any situation other than 5 on 5, BTW.
Don’t let reality clutter up a great narrative.

Oregon Rachel

4 am. That”s brutal.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you! I got to go to the Tank for a 6-3 win over Calgary last October with my nephews. It was fun then, but I can only imagine how loud and crazy it is in the building in the playoffs!

Phat Stat Phil

Agreed — I should have mentioned that I was only looking at even strength time on ice for 5-on-5 lines.

I handle my line determinations in a somewhat quirky way and that might be the source of the confusion. I break the game up into situations in which 4 forward lines get repeated shifts.

As soon as a fifth line gets a second shift, I consider the line combinations to have changed. I re-rank the lines during those periods of time. It’s a habit I got into last year when McLellan was giving Couture’s line more minutes than Thornton’s line

With respect to my numbers, here’s how I have the lines worked out along with the time on ice and number of shifts.
1st period, 0:00
19-8-88 1:46, 3
48-15-57 1:26, 2
12-39-57 1:03, 213-10-18 0:53, 2
83-39-12 0:49, 2
13-15-48 0:38, 1

(Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, by the way. I do count a forward line with Scott Hannan. That was seven second span in the 2nd period at 12:03 after a penalty kill. He was on the ice with Thornton, Boyle, Demers, and Burns.)

Phat Stat Phil

That’s one I’d never heard. Surprising that it comes from baseball. Thanks for the historical footnote. 8)

Phat Stat Phil

The friend in question was a girl, actually. 8)

But no, she did not sneak off with my girlfriend while I went through my notes.

That said, I am susceptible to that tactic. I took a friend of mine to lunch one day and he mentioned a riddle involving ants walking along a line. Owing to some miscommunication, I ended up spending way too much effort on it. By the time I had discovered the miscommunication and worked out the solution, he was already done and I’d barely touched mine.

No question about that. I was keeping it to the modern era. I don’t keep anything older than 1998 in my annotated notes.

Phat Stat Phil

There are anomalies in the ones I mentioned. The Tampa Bay one, for example. Those first seven goals were answered by two at the end. That said, I was careful in my wording in putting those out.

The intent of “unanswered” as I see it is a goal which your team scores without the other team scoring another one at any point after it.

One last note: while I appreciate the appellation of “uber technical”, it really doesn’t fit the bill: I’m very much a pen, paper, and slide rule kind of guy. I’m reasonably sure that Buddy Elf is more technical than me, owing to his knowledge of all things web, cookies, and the like.